Gemini

After having been impressed by the Tetsuo series, Gemini was all I was hoping for and much more. The cinematography is some of the most beautiful and evocative I've seen, with wonderful use of colour, light and design. Though I'd been told this movie was not "cyberpunk" like testsuo, in a way it had a similar ethic, questioning "what makes a person a person", although in this case it's more about what makes one "good or evil". I saw it the same night as I saw another popular Japanese horror, "The Ring", which curiously also features a well, but I found Gemini much more sinister and frightening.

I was incredibly impressed by Shinya Tsukamoto's surreal cyberpunk classic 'Tetsuo', one of the most startling, original and disturbing movies of the last twenty years, and also knocked out by 'Tokyo Fist' his hyperkinetic and violent study of macho competition. Now, once again I'm impressed, this time by 'Gemini' his beautiful and haunting story of identity confusion, and sibling rivalry. The movie is said to be based on Edogawa Rampo's short story 'The Twins', but I've read it and it has virtually nothing to do with this film. Whatever, it doesn't matter, Tsukamoto has taken one or two ideas from Rampo's (excellent) story and expanded it into more interesting and inventive territory. Masahiro Motoki is brilliant in a duel role as the uptight bourgeois doctor and his malevolent criminal twin, and Ryo is beautifully enigmatic as his (apparently) amnesiac wife who is harboring a secret or two. 'Gemini' is a brilliant piece of film making, and I highly recommend it.

First things first: somebody needs to officially release this film in the United States. I see three thousand copies of Dude, Where's My Car every time I step outside, but when I want to see a beautiful and interesting film like Gemini, I have to track down a dubious bootleg on eBay. Pitiful.

The plot concerns a rich doctor suddenly thrown into a well by a man who looks exactly like him. The mysterious doppelganger takes over the doctor's identity, his household, and his wife, all the while laughing and taunting down the well at his imprisoned twin. As the mysterious lookalike gradually reveals the truth to the doctor, it becomes less and less certain which of the twins is the "hero" and which is the "villain."

Shinya Tsukamoto isn't a great director yet, but he's getting there. With Gemini he reveals a tremendous versatility, combining moments of sedate drama with hyperkinetic sequences of terror and joy. The actors are all magnificent (especially Masahiro Motoki in a complex double role), the cinematography is stunning, and the story is thoroughly intriguing and well told. It's not the best movie ever made by any means, but here and there Tsukamoto manages a few moments of real greatness, scenes where we genuinely become one with these characters and their needs. Watch the doctor, defeated and filthy at the bottom of his well, beg for a release from his suffering; watch the wife burst into tears as she remembers her past existence.

Tsukamoto knows what he's doing. He hasn't quite achieved true greatness yet, but one day he may just break through.

Stunning cinematography, moments of serene bliss cutting effortlessly to shocking scenes more akin to his earlier Tetsuo imagery. Tour de force and evidence of a rapidly growing range and depth. So so plot though, the beast within, Jekyll and Hyde, Janus, that sort of thing.

This film is based on a story by Edogawa Rampo, a japanese writer who was so enamoured of Edgar Allen Poe that he even took on his name. This Film is the best evidence I've seen of Poe heavy influence. The twins, the well, the wife.... at times I was reminded of "Tell-Tale Heart", "Cask of Amontillado" and "Fall of the House of Usher". Yet the film's art direction and directorial style took these themes in brilliant new directions. I loved the sound design in the early part of the film using Bulgarian(?) female chorus voices to punctuate the terror of the dark house as the wife searches for the father-in-law. The hair and make-up on the wife made her both beautiful and poisonous at the same time. A uniquely creepy film.